SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Illinois public schools would be required to teach lessons on Midwestern Native American history beginning in the 2024-25 school year under a measure passed by state legislators that is expected to be signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
“The Native American history is in our DNA,” Democratic state Rep. Maurice West of Rockford, the bill’s sponsor, said in an interview. “It’s our obligation to truly know our history as a state.”
Under the bill, all public elementary and high school social studies courses that cover American history or government must include instruction on “events of the Native American experience and Native American history within the Midwest and this state.”
The state House passed the bill Wednesday by an 81-31 vote after it was approved by the Senate, 44-8.
This bill is the latest in a series of history requirements passed by the Illinois legislature. In 2021, the lawmakers passed a bill requiring that Asian American history be taught, making Illinois the first state in the nation to do so. Before that, lawmakers passed requirements for teaching Black history, which followed laws requiring lessons about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Pritzker’s office said the governor expects to sign the latest bill into law in the coming months.
“Gov. Pritzker believes that history should be taught in a way that conveys the story of our country and state as it actually happened,” a spokesperson for Pritzker said in an email. “Including Native American history in the classroom … ensures students are given the tools to understand and empathize with one another.”
The curriculum will be developed with consultation from members of the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative. The bill also requires the State Education Equity Committee to include a member from an organization that works for the betterment of Native Americans, as well as an “individual with a disability” or with a statewide advocacy group on behalf of individuals with disabilities.
Sen. Seth Lewis, a Bloomingdale Republican, was among those opposing the bill, arguing there are already too many curriculum requirements for schools and teachers.
“There are 134 standards that a kindergarten teacher must teach throughout the year. ... Our teachers are coming out of COVID, we are struggling to teach basic math, writing, reading. When is this institution going to give our educators a break?” Lewis said.
On the Senate floor, Republican Sen. Dan McConchie of Hawthorn Woods, speaking in support, reminded colleagues that the bill allows local school boards to decide the minimum amount of time in their curriculum to dedicate to Native American history.
“That means that a school board can decide to take two hours to do this, they can take two days, they can take two weeks,” McConchie said.
Some supporters saw allowing school districts to determine the time that will be spent as a curriculum as a problem that could keep such history from getting its due, but West said the language was necessary because the state has a local mandate on what the school’s curriculum looks like.
“The way I make myself feel better about it is saying that at least the negotiating floor is a lot higher than it was,” West said.
Democratic Rep. Anthony DeLuca of Chicago Heights supported the bill but said he wished Italian American history was getting the same recognition as other groups.
“Last year, the same committee did not approve Italian American history that was the exact same language because it was a mandate and there was a cost,” he said during the House floor debate, while also referencing the statues of Columbus that have been removed in Illinois.
The bill mandates students in elementary school begin learning about Native American history including Native American contributions to art and politics, while older students must also learn about darker parts of that history, including the “genocide of and discrimination against Native Americans.”
“I think if you look nationally across many states, it seems like a lot of folks are trying to whitewash history, which is kind of sad because if we don’t fully understand what had happened, everything that had taken place, we’re probably destined to repeat it again,” said Chairperson Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in Kansas.
Illinois is one of 14 states that does not have a single federally recognized American Indian reservation, according to the National Congress of American Indians.
“Prairie Band Potawatomi have a treaty with a reservation here in Illinois, but it was illegally auctioned off,” professor Megan Bang of Ojibwe descent who teaches and serves as the director of the center for Native American and Indigenous research at Northwestern University said. “There is a history here that is actually a problematic history. That is why I think that people should have to know the history of their state.”
Rupnick explained that the state of Illinois made a deal with his ancestors in the mid-19th century, promising them land in Illinois. But then “Illinois illegally sold his land, claiming that (the chief) had abandoned it.”
While many teachers in Illinois have worked Native American history into their classrooms, one teacher the Tribune spoke to said it has never been a focus.
“Once in a while … we might find a text that was through the lens of an Indigenous person, but that would be very intentional on my part, not something that was already presented in the curriculum,” said Heather McCoy, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade social science and civics at the Nettelhorst School in Lakeview.
What the future curriculum looks like and how much time each school spends on Native American history is yet to be decided. But it’s a step in the right direction, according to advocates like McCoy.
“This is about the only opportunity that I see in my own experience, in my years of teaching, that Indigenous stories are being told.”
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(Chicago Tribune’s Dan Petrella contributed.)
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